


A Sunny Day

by Cornbread5287



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Don't hate me omg, I am a bad person, Lots of angsty stuff, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Mentions of Richonne, it's pretty bad, lots of sadness, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornbread5287/pseuds/Cornbread5287
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a tense conversation in Alexandria, Daryl goes missing. Rick sets out with Glenn and Michonne to find him and bring him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sunny Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skarlatha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/gifts).



> GIANT HUGE ENORMOUS THANK YOU to Skarlatha for being not only the best beta in the world, but also for being my friend. And dealing with my shit. XD
> 
>  
> 
> This happened before Maggie got sick. Rosita, Michonne, and Glenn managed to convince Daryl to come back to Alexandria. Also, Carol has left and has not been found or come back yet.

Daryl had been acting different ever since Glenn, Rosita, and Michonne had brought him back. Anyone could see that. The redneck had every right to be upset; all the shit he’d been through was piling up. The farm, Merle, the prison, Terminus, Beth, Denise, and now Carol? Everyone was ready to crack. Daryl was always the strong one, the one that pulled them all through. But lately, it seemed that he was ready to give up.

“Daryl, can I talk to you a minute?” Rick asked, walking up to where Daryl sat on the ground beside his bike in the sunshine. The redneck didn’t even pause, continuing to polish the front tire on his motorcycle without looking up.

“S’what you’re doin’ ain’t it?” he growled. Rick sighed and looked at the sky. It was too hot and the sky was too bright and blue to be dealing with this shit. He shook his head and tried again.

“You’ve been acting different lately. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, you know?” Silence. “So… uh. I mean, how are you?”

“How’s  _ Michonne _ ?” Daryl spat.

Rick raised his eyebrows. “Do you have a problem with Michonne?”

“Not at fucking all. Go away, Grimes, I’m fucking busy.”

Rick sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. Daryl stayed silent, moving to polish the back tire and ignoring Rick’s existence. After a few more attempts to talk that were completely ignored, Rick gave up and walked back to his house.

\-----

 

It was later that afternoon when Glenn came bursting through his door.

“Rick,” he said breathlessly. Rick jumped up from the couch, his hand going to his gun immediately.

“We can’t find Daryl. We’ve looked everywhere, man. His motorcycle is still here but we can’t find him.”

Rick was already at the door by the time Glenn had finished speaking.

“Michonne is in the shower. When she gets out, tell her what happened and that I went to look for him. Nobody leaves until I know for sure he isn’t holed up inside the walls somewhere, you understand me?” Glenn nodded, and Rick was out the door.

He speed-walked back to where Daryl had been earlier, figuring it was as good of a place to start as any. The polish and rag were still laying out, a toolbox open on the ground beside them. Rick started to take off when something in the toolbox caught his eye.

A sheet of clean white notebook paper was folded up, laying on top of the mess in the toolbox like it had just been thrown in. Rick picked it up and unfolded it, reading the messy scrawl that had to be Daryl’s own handwriting.

_ Sometimes, when life gets to be too much, and the things inside your head that make you feel bad on a good day are working on your nerves, it’s raining. It’s dark and dreary, and the clouds reflect the feeling you have in your chest that you can’t put into words. Thunder and lightning light up the sky and make your teeth chatter and your hands shake. It’s perfect in the most terrible and terrifying way. _

_ What’s worse is when it’s sunny. The breeze is blowing and it’s hot and beautiful and all the things that make people smile. And you squint your eyes as you glare at the bright blue sky and the fluffy white clouds and wish it would all just go away. _

_ You don’t know if you need a drag off a cigarette or a bullet to the temple. Everything is confusing. Everything hurts. That feeling in your gut and your chest and your head… it’s dangerous. And it doesn’t go away. _

_ If things end badly for me, and I take myself out, it will be on a sunny day. _

Rick’s hands were shaking by the time he got to the end of it. He carefully folded the note back up, putting it in his shirt pocket. He strode determinedly over to the wall close to where the bike was. There was a tree close to it that would be easy to climb. If Daryl was trying to get out fast…

Rick pulled himself into the tree with some difficulty. He could hear a few walkers growling, but it didn’t sound like too many to handle. He climbed farther up into the tree and out onto a limb, letting it droop with him until his feet were close to the ground on the other side of the wall. He let go, dropping a few feet to the ground, and looked around him.

Several feet away there were three walkers. Two of them were heading for him, and one was eating something behind them. Rick tried not to let panic rise in his chest at the thought of what might lay behind the two walkers coming at him.

Pulling his knife out of his belt, he walked to meet them. He shoved one of them to the ground, turning to quickly stab the other one in the top of the head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the third walker shambling towards him. The walker he pushed down had managed to get itself into a sitting position, and Rick leaned over and disposed of him. He stood to take on the third one, noticing that there was a lot of blood and chunks of flesh on the ground behind it, but no body. His heart skipped a beat.

_ It was probably an animal or something, Daryl’s fine, _ he told himself as he took out the last walker. He wiped blood and sweat off his forehead and took a deep breath before walking over to the puddle of remains and crouching down.

The remains were almost definitely human; the pile of entrails that the third walker had been chewing on was too large for any of the animals Rick had seen close to the walls. The blood was tacky, only dry around the edges; whatever had died here had died earlier that day.

Rick swallowed hard, his breathing picking up.  _ It wasn’t Daryl. It wasn’t Daryl. It wasn’t- _

Rick turned sharply at the sound of a twig breaking behind him, raising the knife.

“Easy,” came Michonne’s voice, and Rick relaxed. She and Glenn looked at the puddle in front of him. Glenn’s face went pale.

“Oh, man,” he groaned. Rick stood.

“We have to find him,” he croaked, surprised that his voice was cracking. He blinked, his eyes feeling too wet for his comfort. Michonne nodded.

“We will. Come on,” she said, leading them towards the woods.

They had been walking nearly an hour when they stopped for a water break, at Glenn’s insistence. And that’s when he saw it.

Rick raised the bottle to his lips, scanning the woods over the top of it. He froze, the bottle falling from his hand, his lips still parted, but in horror now. There was no mistaking the mop of brown hair and the torn leather vest; it was Daryl.

But it wasn’t Daryl anymore.

The walker had been heading away from them, but turned at the sound of Rick dropping his bottle. The once piercing blue eyes were now a cloudy, foggy, sick looking green. His shirt was torn open, a huge, gaping hole in his abdomen. The walker started towards them; Glenn and Michonne both rose from their seat on a fallen tree, but Rick held out his hand for them to stay.

Without saying a word, Rick slowly walked toward Daryl, his best friend, his heart breaking in his chest. Tears splashed down his cheeks, a sob escaping his throat as he reached the walker. It grabbed him, slamming him into a tree as it stumbled. Daryl’s strong hands gripped him, but this time it wasn’t to save him, to protect him, to steady him. This time, Daryl was trying to kill him.

Rick sobbed again, his stomach heaving and his chest aching as he looked into those eyes one more time, holding the walker away from him as it snapped with Daryl’s teeth and tried to claw with Daryl’s nails. Rick gripped his knife, his entire body shaking, and plunged it deep into the walker’s temple, the skin and bones still fresh enough to resist.

The walker sagged against him and he lowered it to the ground, his entire body heaving with his sobs as he stared into the cold, dead eyes of the man he loved.

And he knew it was love, too little and too late though it was. He loved Daryl. This man was more than his best friend; he’d always kind of known it, deep down. He’d suspected his feelings for Daryl weren’t as platonic as he let on. He’d never given it a try because the redneck was probably the last person that would ever have romantic feelings for Rick, so he’d moved on, taken to Michonne and tried to forget these feelings that were fighting their way to the surface now.

_ I never got to tell him, _ Rick thought as he let out another throat-ripping sob. He knew Glenn and Michonne were talking, but their words weren’t reaching him. The only thing he could hear was the voice in his head, screaming that Daryl never knew how loved he was, never knew how Rick felt, that the last time he’d seen Daryl alive the archer had been pissed. He cradled Daryl’s dead body, brushing the hair from his eyes with shaking fingers. He couldn’t take this. He’d lost it after Lori died. He’d been on the brink of losing it, losing himself, many times since. Daryl always brought him back, kept him from taking that last step. And now that he was gone, Rick could feel that darkness creeping in on him, and this time, there would be no coming back.

He couldn’t come back from this.

He wouldn’t.

He almost didn’t realize what he was doing until Michonne screamed. He never looked away from Daryl’s face as he put the Colt to his own temple, reciting in his head the words on what he took to be Daryl’s suicide note in his head.  _ You don’t know if you need a drag off a cigarette or a bullet to the temple. Everything is confusing. Everything hurts… _

He pulled the trigger.

\-----

Carl threw the last shovel full of dirt onto his father’s grave and threw the shovel down. He sat himself down between the two makeshift grave markers. Michonne came up to him, her eyes still red-rimmed from crying.

“Enid said you were still here,” she said. Carl nodded.

“Wanted to fill them in by myself,” he explained, sniffing. She nodded and held her hand out to him.

“Come on. Let’s go inside, get you a drink,” she said. He took her hand reluctantly and followed her back towards their house. He stopped at the edge of the patch of dirt they used as a graveyard, looking up at the sky and sighing.

“I thought it was supposed to rain at funerals,” he said, squinting into the sun.

“I thought that, too,” Michonne replied, looking over at the fresh new graves.

“At least it’s a sunny day, I guess,” Carl mumbled, his voice thick. Michonne put her hand on his shoulder gently, leading him away.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave me comments and please also don't hate me.


End file.
